 This morning, I wanna invite you to open your Bibles with me to the book of Revelation chapter three. And I wanna continue on a series that was an unplanned message last weekend entitled When God Comes. And when I say it was unplanned, I'll be honest with you that I had planned long ago. I typically try to plan series, teaching series and emphasis out months in advance, partly because it takes a long time for me to get through just about anything. I dig down deep into it and I wanna make sure that we're giving it as much time as we need, but also for our creative team also to be able to kinda plan and communicate and build our kids curriculum and different things around emphasis and themes that God might be given to us. But then there are these moments that are unplanned moments where God breaks in and interrupts your regularly scheduled programming. And we have been in one of those seasons, both as a church and also, I believe as the church, the church of Jesus, the American church. I really believe that Jesus is walking among the lampstands of the church in response to the prayers of the remnant that have been crying out, God, please move in this generation. And I mentioned the movie, The Jesus Revolution. I don't believe that it was any accident in the sovereignty of God that this film that has been years in production would be released right in the middle of a national and a generational revival that's taking place all across America right now. Maybe it initiated, started a place like Asbury, but there are multiple, multiple college campuses now. I heard reports that Yale is even encountering a visitation from the Lord in a very profound way. Churches all across the United States, this last week I spent a lot of time texting back and forth with friends of mine all over the United States who pastor great churches, just saying, I don't know what happened. It was just like a bomb went off in our church and God is just moving in a profound way. And people are getting saved, people are reconciling and people are getting motivated, sharing their faith with other people outside of the four walls of the church. It's even happening in the nations of the world. It's not just here. It's happening all across the globe. And I think only God is big enough to do something like that. Only God can pull that off. And in those moments when that happens, you just have to respond and say, God have your way. I told our staff this last weekend or this last week during our staff meeting that the posture we wanna take is this, we wanna have open hands with what God is doing, but we wanna have contending hearts. We wanna have open hands. We're not trying to control something. We don't wanna try and manufacture, make something happen. But yet at the same time, we don't wanna throw our hearts in neutral in the middle of a time when God has his foot on the accelerator. We want our hearts to contend for the things that God is contending for. And oftentimes just like he provided daily bread to the children of Israel in the wilderness, he doesn't give us more than a day's notice on what he's doing, which for us planners really drives us crazy. Last weekend we just had a profound move of God at all three of our locations. And then we called a spontaneous Sunday night. I don't even know what we call it. Spontaneous, just come to church Sunday night service. And we had the largest crowd that we have ever had. I mean, literally we were in triple overflow. This room was just packed. The lobby was packed. Student ministry center was packed. And more than just the fact that there was a huge crowd. And by the way, that just speaks to me of the hunger and the desire to press in towards God when God is moving. But more than that, hearing the testimonies of lives being changed in the next generation to just, I sat in the front row next to Jane and then kind of popped up here a couple of different times but I just wept really most of the afternoon to see God moving in young people's lives. And by the way, tonight we just decided here's that contending heart thing is we're gonna do it tonight at 6 p.m. We're just gonna have another service and it's gonna be more worship, more prayer and we've got more testimonies of what God, some of what he's done this last week, some of what he's been doing over the last several different weeks. And we really have a sense as we've been leading in that tonight there's gonna be a strong emphasis on deliverance of people getting free from bondages, of healing, healing of the emotions, healing of bodies, God just moving and setting people free. And it's gonna be a powerful night. Listen, we're gonna open doors to the lobby at five here at Richland. This is gonna be another unified service and doors to the sanctuary at 5.30. And just if you're hungry and you wanna come and be a part of that come. And you might even reach out to somebody that you know who's not a believer or who's walked away from God or needs a touch from the Lord. And you might go out of your way today and invite them to come back tonight because I know this, I know that God is gonna meet us here. Here's the thing is when God comes, He comes with intention. And so I wanna share part two of this message with you this morning, look with me at Revelation chapter three beginning in verse 14. It says into the angel of the church in Laodicea, right. The words of the Amen, the faithful and the true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works that you are neither hot nor cold. I would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing. Not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. And I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white garments that you may clothe yourself in the shame of your nakedness may not be seen and sav to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock if anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. Lord today we ask about the power of your Holy Spirit that you would speak to us afresh and anew. Lord we believe that when you come you come with purpose and you come with intention and we confess this morning that we need you. Jesus we need you far beyond what we can imagine that we need you. We may even know that we need you. We don't even know how desperately though we truly need you. And we ask that you would come and soften our hearts touch us and move in our lives in Jesus name. Amen. When God comes, God comes often as what I call the great interrupter. He's the great interrupter. He interrupts our regularly scheduled programming. He interrupts what seems to be oftentimes a good course, a good life, a good thought or a good relationship or even a good church service. When he comes, he comes with intention and oftentimes it comes to interrupt because he wants to change the conversation. If you've ever been interrupted in the middle of a talk or at dinner with somebody and maybe there's a group of you around a table and three or four of you are in the middle of a conversation and then somebody maybe comes to the table because they've just heard some news or something has just happened that they just can't keep on the inside and they interrupt the conversation and when what they bring to the table is significant everybody shifts the conversation. I remember that it was kind of like that during 9-11 on a Tuesday morning. When everybody was doing their thing on a beautiful Tuesday morning we had dropped our kids off. I was just back from Russia on a missions trip and the news was on the TV screen and then they said sorry to interrupt but a plane has just crashed into the side of World Trade Center building number one and then a little while later, the second building. That's what an interruption is and it might be a joyful interruption it might be a ominous interruption but you know what it's like when something changes and what you were talking about before no longer matters because everything has changed. This is often times what God does. He interrupts the conversation and when we see Jesus, the resurrected glorified Jesus in the book of Revelation, the first couple of chapters in chapter two and chapter three, he's the one who reveals himself as the one whose eyes blaze with fire the one whose voice is like the sound of waterfalls and he says I'm also the one who walks among the lampstands and the lampstands if you read these chapters you'll recognize very quickly that the lampstands represent churches. In this case, it's seven churches in Asia Minor, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. These are seven local churches in seven cities where Jesus dictates a letter to John the Apostle who's exiled on the island of Patness for preaching the gospel and it's Jesus who appears to John. I don't know if you guys have watched and the chosen at all but we've enjoyed watching it recently and watching how Jesus interacts with his disciples in a playful way, in a fun way, in a down to earth way, as sit around the campfire, make little jokes. Jesus makes jokes to James and John, calls them sons of thunder basically because they're ready for a fight at just about any moment. And I love that playful interaction that Jesus has with them and as you read the gospels, especially like the gospel of John, you can pick up on that but John, who is the aged last living apostle, he's an old man who's outlived and survived persecution. He's been stuck on an island called Patness in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea for nothing more than preaching Jesus and he wonders how long he's gonna live. He has an encounter with Jesus, the same Jesus that he walked with for three and a half years, the same Jesus that joked with him and was playful with him and led him and camped with him at the campfire but this time when John sees Jesus, it's not the playful Jesus, it's the glorified eyes burning with zeal and fire, Jesus. And John doesn't go up to him with a chummy pet on the back or a high five. John falls at his feet and almost dies and he worships Jesus because he sees Jesus in a different way than he's ever seen him before. And it's this Jesus who says I walk among the lampstands and he says, John, I want you to dictate seven letters to these seven churches because as I've walked in and out of these churches in modern day Turkey, that are churches that had been started by the apostles, I wanna speak to them and I wanna interrupt, I wanna interrupt their conversation and I wanna call them back to some things. To the church at Ephesus, he tells them you've left your first love. You're doing all the right things, you've got good theology, you've got great classes, wonderful programs, your leaders are moral, you've remained Orthodox but yet the fire of your first love passion for me, Jesus has waned and if you don't return and restore your first love by going back and doing the first works, I'm gonna remove your lampstand from you to the church of Smyrna, he gives them admonition and encouragement as they prepare for persecution that's coming. Jesus tells him, double down, get ready because the times are changing and you're about to go into a season where some of you are gonna be thrown into prison for your faith and you need to solidify and strengthen your hearts and your faith for that. To the church at Pergamum, he rebukes them for their compromise. To the church at Thyatira, he rebukes them for tolerating. A leader that he calls Jezebel because she's leading the church into spiritual adultery. To the church at Sardis, he says you're falling asleep. Wake up and to the church at Philadelphia, he says you have good hearts but little power. You have little power. But when he comes to the church at Laodicea, he shifts gears. And he says to the church at Laodicea, he says you say of yourself that you're rich, you've prospered, you have need of nothing, not realizing that you're wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. You say we're rich. You say you've got everything. What Jesus is doing is he's speaking to a church that has fallen prey to the deception of self dependency. They have fallen prey to a lie. The lie is I don't need anything. I've got it all. My life is good. Our church is good. I'm rich. I mean, I've got first world problems when ice knocks out my power. But you know, pretty much my life is pretty good. And we've got lots of great things and just about everything that I need, everything that I've ever wanted, I have it. And yet somehow Jesus sees them differently. Richard Lovelace, who was an author writing on who Jonathan Edwards is a great revivalist of the first grade awakening. When he's interpreting Jonathan Edwards' view of what revival is, he says this. From Jonathan Edwards' perspective, he says revival is actually an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which restores the people of God to normal spiritual life after a period of corporate declension. Periods of spiritual decline occur in history because of the gravity of indwelling sin that keeps pulling believers first into formal religion and then into open apostasy. And so revival is God shaking us out of that. Jonathan Edwards used the illustration of this force that takes our faith and our relationship with Jesus that starts red-hot and then begins to die down. He relates it to gravity, Jesus relates it to temperature. If any of you have ever gotten up in the morning and poured yourself a hot cup of coffee, I mean, there's nothing better. You pour that coffee, you set the timer, you get up in the morning, you go into your whatever kind of coffee maker you have. Hopefully it's a good one. And you pour yourself a piping hot cup of coffee, you take it with you into the other room, you sit it down on the table and you maybe take a little sip of it and it's super hot. And then you set it there and you get caught up in reading a book or texting or watching the news or praying and reading your Bible, whatever the case might be. But you get so caught up in it that a few minutes later, five, 10 minutes has gone and you take your cup of coffee and it doesn't taste the same. You leave it there for half an hour and now it's lukewarm. And the worst thing in the world is lukewarm coffee. We have friends that would make, put a cup of coffee and pour it and then nurse it all day long and like put it back in the microwave two or three different times. That's a sin, it's a cardinal sin. It's a sin, it's wrong, repent. But if you ever wondered how that happens, how that hot cup of coffee grows slowly cool. Now there's, I love iced coffee. Anybody like iced coffee in this room? You know, one of my pet peeves now just so we're confessing in church is when you go to Starbucks now and you order coffee, they say, is that hot? I'm like, is there any other kind of coffee? I mean, if I wanted iced coffee, I would order iced but don't assume that I'm ordering iced unless I say hot. It's actually the other way around. It's assumed that it's hot unless I ask for ice. Can I get a witness in this place? Thank you, but they'll ask you. And I like iced coffee in the summer. It's great, it's wonderful. And I like really hot coffee. What I can't stand is lukewarm coffee. When you take that cup and you drink it and you just wanna spit it out of your mouth. This is what Jesus says to the church at Laodicea. He says you're neither hot and you're not cold. You're indifferent because you've become distracted. You've left your faith sitting on the table and you've got wrapped up in some other things and the fire that wants to burn hot on the inside of you, you've let it grow dim and it's not cold because in order for something to be cold it has to have an agent act upon it in an artificial way. And in order for something to be hot it has to have a flame put to it or a heating element put to it to cause it to become hot. The natural progression or recession of anything is to move towards lukewarm. And in temperature there's, when you talk about the rate of something cooling it's called the Fourier's Law which talks about the rate of flux from boiling to cooling. I wonder what the Fourier's Law is of our faith. How long does it take for our red hot faith to cool down because we become distracted by self-dependency and self-sufficiency? I wonder how long it takes for us to go from red hot to lukewarm. I don't know but obviously Jesus does and obviously God does because there are moments where God chooses to step in and interrupt the conversation and get our attention again and say, wait a second, wait a second, you become distracted, you become deceived, you think you've got it all handled yourself, you say, and think about what he says, you say that you're rich and you've prospered and you need nothing. In other words, you say I'm rich which means immaterial possessions as well as satisfaction. And you say that you've prospered. That's talking about a process where your own hand has taken what God gave you in the first place and you've used it to increase yourself and the process was a result of your work and your labor and your luck. And then ultimately you can get to a place where you say I have need of nothing but Jesus says not realizing. See the gravity of self-sufficiency pulls us like gravity pulls us to the center of the earth. The gravity of our sin and our self-sufficiency pulls us away from God with centrifugal force that the only remedy of it is for Jesus to grab a hold of our hearts. And I believe in the hour in which we're living in, it's not just happening on a personal level, he's doing it to the American church as a whole. He's saying to the American church, I want your heart back. You've been relying on yourself. You've been relying on your programs. You've been relying on your ability and your processes and your church growth principles. You've been relying on your great wealth. You've been relying on the fact that culture was pretty much Judeo-Christian and agreed with you on most things. But what you haven't realized is that from the first and the second great awakening and the last time Jesus walked among the lampstands in a manifest, powerful way, the temperature of your faith has cooled. And God mercifully, Jesus mercifully is stepping back in among the lampstands, both of the American church in general, but to believers as well as the community around us. And Jesus is showing up because he wants to move us and pull us like a magnet away from the gravitational pull towards apostasy, which means walking away from the faith. And he wants to renew our lampstands. He wants to renew our hearts. He wants to recapture our attention. So the reality is that Jesus sees from a eternal perspective that you and I don't. How is it that we can live our lives? I'm rich, I'm prospered, and I don't need anything. I'll go church, I'll live the sermon, it's wonderful, it's great. But you know what, I got my real life on Monday. How is it that we can live our lives and say, I believe in God, but I don't wanna get crazy about things. I don't wanna be a fanatic about things. You know, I live my life, but I don't wanna stand out. I believe in Jesus, but I don't wanna tell anybody about that. It's interesting to me that a progressive Christian mindset, we see, by the way, we see this happening in churches all across America, denomination splitting down the middle, not over defending, not defending the Bible, but actually wanting to excuse ourselves from the Bible. But the one thing that kind of the left leaning progressive, what I would call deviating from truth element of quote, the American church resounds with consistently as, oh, remember, love your neighbor. It's not loving to your neighbor to be intolerant. It's not loving to your neighbor to read the Bible literally. It's not loving, we need to be tolerant of everybody, but listen, the most unloving thing that we can do is to look into the eyes of a generation that is lost and far away from God, and to be so indifferent that we don't care that without an encounter with Jesus, they will spend eternity away from that. There's nothing more intolerant. I said what Jesus did? Jesus, who is the model of love, didn't come to the world and say, the son of man came into the world to affirm everybody. He says, I came into the world not to condemn, but to save. I'm so glad Jesus didn't affirm my sin. I'm so glad Jesus wasn't intimidated to call it out in my life and to convict me. And who are we as the church to sit back day in and day out when we have so much? You know what we really do have a lot. When we have so much, and then to look into the eyes of a generation and go, I really don't want to tell anybody about Jesus because they might not like me anymore. Or I don't want them to ask me a question that I don't know the answer to, or I don't want to stand out and be called a religious fanatic. I don't want to be ostracized. Listen, we've got the hope of the world and his name is Jesus. There is no other way to the Father than through Jesus. You can't work yourself into heaven. You can't self-improve yourself into heaven. Your sincerity won't get you into heaven. The only thing that gets you into heaven is sinners encounter a holy God who became man, died on the cross, took our sin and shame upon himself and then God raised him from the dead. His name is Jesus. That's the only way. It's the only way and we've got it. One of the most beautiful aspects of revivals of the past is seeing what happens when a generation really does meet Jesus. It's one of the beautiful things of salvation in general is what happens when an individual meets Jesus for real. It's like when he becomes real to us, when we realize he sees us, he knows us. He knows every part of us. Just like he says to the church at Laodicea, he's like, you think this about yourself, but this is the reality of yourself. You're pitiable, you're wretched, you're poor, you're naked and you're blind. And think about those aspects. You're pitiable to be pitted, you're wretched. It's not very nice. You're naked, which means you're vulnerable and you're exposed. My greatest nightmare, I'm a Confessions of a Pastor. I have two recurring dreams, not all the time, but occasionally. And one dream is that I sleep in on Sunday mornings and I get a phone call from somebody saying, the worship team wants to know how long they need to keep going before you get here. And I like wake up and I can't find any clothes and I'm running around the house and that anxiety, I'm like, I gotta hurry up, just tell them to keep flowing. I'll be there in a minute. I have that dream probably every couple of years and it feels so real. The other recurring dream that I have that's less dignified is that I'm in the front row and I realize I don't have any pants on. I'm just, no, really. I mean, I'm like, oh, it's my, and like I'm trying to pull my shirt down. It's like, how did I forget to put pants? It's like the embarrassment element. If you've ever done public speaking, you know, it's like your worst fear of something like that going wrong. When church was very small and we were in the other sanctuary, we had a plexiglass pulpit so you could see through it. And one Sunday I was preaching and Jane and John were in the front row and they're like laughing, cackling, like brothers and sisters do and I was staying there and it was super distracting. And it was so distracting that I finally stopped and I said, what? And Jane goes, your fly's open. And so every time I put my hand in my pocket, my zipper was, but I had a plexiglass clear pulpit so the whole room. And that's when Jesus says you're naked. You think everything's great, but you don't realize you're vulnerable. You're exposed in the spirit realm, the aspect of reality that we can't see. We look vastly different than we do in the natural. In the natural, you can look all put together, can look sharp, can be attractive, have your act together, have all the right clothes, be fit. But if you could see what God sees, without Jesus, without the robe, the white robe of righteousness, without the life of God's spirit and born again on the inside of us, all we are is stained with our sin, dead, like a carcophagus on the inside of us, our spirit is completely dead. There's nothing good. We're to be pinnied. We're wretched. That's how we look. That's how we exist and we're poor. We don't have resources. Jesus said, what will a man give in exchange for his own soul? You can have the whole world. What does it gain a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his own soul? There's nothing, there's no greater poverty than the poverty of sin. That poverty that like gravity keeps pulling us away, pulling us deeper and deeper into darkness and depravity and deception and delusion and ultimately into death and yet the whole time lying to us telling us, no, you're rich, you're happy. This is it, this is the dream. Keep going down that road. We keep going down and thinking, well, ultimately it's gotta lead to happiness. This has gotta lead to fulfillment. This is what life's all about. I'm climbing the corporate ladder. I'm making the money. I'm having the relationships, pleasures at the top of my game. I'm living for myself. Eventually this is gonna pan out as something good and it's not until it's too late that we recognize, it's not until it's too late that our eyes are opened up on the last moment that we take a breath here and the first moment our eyes open up and we recognize that we gained everything that the world offered, but it was a trap. He says, you're poor and you're blind. You can't see what's real. Second Corinthians says, we walk by faith and not by sight because the things of this world are temporal, but the things that are eternal, the things that are invisible are eternal. You know, it's the things that you can't see that are real. And when Jesus looks at us, even though he sees us through the lens of pity, even though he sees us in our spiritual poverty, he sees us groping around through life. He says, ask me. Ask me for something. Verse 18, I counsel you. Buy from me. Notice he says, buy from me. Gold refined by fire. So that you may be rich and white garments, so that you may clothe yourself in the shame of your nakedness may not be seen and salved to anoint your eyes so that you may ultimately see. Only Jesus has what we need. Only Jesus has what we need. Only Jesus can exchange our filthy rags stained by our sin and give us white robes, unstained, righteous in God's sight. Only Jesus in the fire that burns in his eyes, can refine our hearts. It becomes the process that God works in us where he refines us and he restores white hot love for God. Only God can anoint our eyes. Give us new lenses. Give us a new way of seeing to see like he sees. He opens up the eyes of our spirit. See, we're dead in our sins, but then in Jesus, he opens our eyes up and listen, it's not just unsaved. It's not just us without Jesus that can't see. It's oftentimes in the church. Christians who are saved, but yet we've grown cold or lukewarm in our faith and we've become blinded by the things of this world, blinded by our own self-sufficiency. And listen, it's even in the church. I believe one of the things that Jesus is doing in this hour. You and I are living in a moment that is going to be a period of time. I don't know how long it's gonna be, but we are in a window. I believe this prophetically. We are living in a window within American history where Jesus is one more time visiting his church before the return of the Lord. He's visiting his church. I don't know if this is a year. I don't know if this is two years. I don't know if this is five years, but I know this, we are living in a window of time where Jesus is walking among the lampstands of the church in America. He's walking across the landscape of America to a generation of people who've never been in the church. And he is going to reap a harvest out of this generation. And he is going to restore and refine the church. But it's going to happen in people and in places who say to Jesus, I want to buy. In other words, I want to exchange. I want to exchange, to buy something is an exchange. How do we buy from Jesus? Can we buy salvation? Can we buy race standing with God? Can we buy our hearts burning with zeal for the Lord? Now, here's the exchange. The exchange is, here's my poverty. And Jesus says, here's my riches. Here's my stained garment, Jesus. And he says, here's my robe of righteousness. Here's my nakedness, Jesus. He says, here's my covering. Here's my shame, Jesus. He says, here's your sonship. Here's your new position seated with my father and me in heavenly places. Lord, here's my fears about the future that I've tried to shape and make happen with my own power. And Jesus says, let me anoint your eyes. You give me your shame, you give me your vision and your dream for your future. And I'm going to touch your eyes and show you my plans for your future. In other words, if you'll give me everything, I'll give you my everything. This is what the cross is. It's the great exchange. 2 Corinthians says, he who knew no sin became sin for us. It says that he became poor so that we might become rich. Do we really think that means Jesus went to the cross so you and I can have the wealth of this world? That's such a cheap and shallow dream. Now, Jesus became poor on the cross in spirit so that we could become rich in spirit in him. Never to lose what we have gained in him. See, Jesus stands at the door and he knocks. This is what he says. I stand at the door and knock. I stand at the door of your life and I'm knocking. And anybody who answers the door, anybody, I will come in. What does it mean when somebody knocks on your door? It means that they've come and they're interrupting. Hey, I don't know what you're doing inside. Let me in. I want to talk to you about something. I want to deliver something. I want to tell you something. I want to come in and I want to commune with you. I want to have a conversation. I want to build a relationship. I want to change your regularly scheduled programming. And I see Jesus standing at the door of the church. Let me in. When Jesus sees the American church, I think he sees Luke warm. I think he sees us and I'm talking collectively. He sees 340,000 churches across America. And I think Jesus is walking among the lampstands. And he's saying, I want to come in again. Will you let me in the church that I purchased with my own blood? Will you let me change the conversation away from you to the ones who are lost? Will you let me change the conversation and move you from religion that is just one step away from walking away from the faith completely? And will you allow me to breathe with the fire of my presence once again? And in the process, renew the fire in your hearts. You know, one of my favorite stories in the gospels is when it says two of the disciples walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. They didn't know it was Jesus. But after he broke the bread, he sat down with them and he dined with them and he communed with them because they invited him in. And it says after he broke the bread, he disappeared from them and they turned to each other and said, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us? You know, the answer to a look warm heart is responding to the knock at the door and saying, Jesus, your way, not my way, come in, Jesus. Come and take the seat at the head of the table. That's true in the church and that's true in our lives together. Some of us are burning with the consuming fire of God's presence in our life. Praise the Lord. Some of us, if we're honest, have said to God without saying it, I'm rich, I've prospered, I don't need anything. Can I tell you that's the most dangerous place for you to be? It's better to be poor in spirit. Say, I know I'm a mess. God have mercy, but say, God, I'm good. Some of us are there. Some of us, Jesus has been knocking at the door of our heart and he's saying, I wanna come in, I wanna interrupt, I wanna change the conversation. I wanna renew the conversation. And the question is, what do we do with the knock at the door? Would you stand with me wherever you're at? Portage, downtown as well. Listen to me, Jesus is knocking at the door and I'm gonna start with the church as a whole by saying, ready church, we wanna be one of those churches that says to Jesus, come in, we want you. God comes where he's wanted and we want him. We are not going to be an indifferent, religiously observant, go through the motion, status quo, happy country club church. That is not who we're gonna be, we're gonna be burning ones. We're gonna be the burning ones. Not out of arrogance and pride, like look at us, we're just like God, we recognize how desperately we need you and that you have purposed us and had intentions for us in this era, in this time period and wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, that's where we're going, that's what we're doing. But moving from that standpoint to individuals, I believe that in this room and in all three rooms this morning, there are some that Jesus is knocking on the door of your life and I will say this, you have never really surrendered your life to Jesus Christ and allowed him to forgive you of your sins as only he can and to create a new living spirit on the inside of your dead heart and to give you eternal life. You've never done that. I'm not talking about religion, I'm not talking about even believing in the existence of Jesus or going to church, we're talking about you having a personal relationship with Jesus, he wants that, he's standing at the door and he's knocking saying, let me come in, let me come in. Exchange, you're broken down for the eternal. Some of us maybe, you have done that in your life at some point, but you, like the prodigal son, you have walked away from that, the coffee has gotten cold on the table because you've allowed your heart to get distracted and now you come back and you recognize my faith is lukewarm, but I'm saying Jesus, I want it to be hot again and I'm returning, I'm returning all across this room and in every room this morning with every head up, every eye looking around, this is a moment of us responding to the knock at the door. If you're here or you're in one of these other locations and you say, I know I am not right with God, but today I'm saying Jesus saved me, I'm saying Jesus, I'm opening the door, come in again. I know my faith has gotten cold or lukewarm, I know I've never made you Lord, but today I'm saying Jesus be Lord and Savior of my life, save me, rescue me. I want the robe of righteousness, I want a clear conscience, I want my sin and shame removed, I want to follow Jesus, save me, here I am. On a count of three, when you hear me say three, if that's you and you know you need to get right with God, I want you to raise your hand and we're gonna pray together, this is your moment. The door is being knocked, will you answer? One, two, three, raise it all over the room and hold it up, come on, raise it, you're not alone. Come home, prodigal, surrender, one who's far from Jesus, if you've not raised your hand, this is your moment, will you answer the door? Whatever building you're in, raise it high right now, this is your moment to say yes to Jesus. Yes, yes, yes, lots of hands all over the room, you're not alone. Jesus is knocking on a lot of doors today. He's knocking on a lot of doors today. Here's what I'm gonna ask you to do. If you raise your hand, wherever you're at, I want you to step out of your seat and I want you to come down to the front and we're gonna pray together at the front, we're taking a public stand for Jesus and we're saying yes to Him. If you raise your hand, step out of your seat and come right now, come on, come from wherever you're at, the front, the back, come from the front, come from the back, just come. Guys, come on, let's support them as they're coming. This is the moment, if you've not come, we'll wait just one moment, you come. Portage, you come, downtown, come. To those of you who just came down, I want you to know, we love you, but more importantly, he loves you. This is not a moment of shame. This is a moment of joy and life and salvation. And here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna just pray a prayer together. We're saying, Jesus, we believe in you and we're answering the door of your knock at our heart and we're gonna receive you in. When we pray, he's gonna hear you, he's gonna save you, he's gonna fill you with life. Your sins are gonna be removed. You won't have any of that old stuff. It's a brand new beginning because Jesus is just that good. So we're gonna pray. I'm gonna lead you in a prayer. I want everyone in the room to agree with you and we're gonna say this together. And when we say amen, you're gonna be a brand new creation. All right, here we go. Say this with me. Let's bow our heads. Wherever you're at, bow your heads. Say, Heavenly Father, I come in Jesus' name. And I'm answering the door today. And I'm saying, Jesus, come in and be my Lord and Savior. I confess I've sinned. I've lived for myself, but I surrender today. You can have my guilt. You can have my shame. You can have my sin. You can have everything. Save me. And fill me with life today. Jesus, I believe you died on the cross for me and that you rose from the dead and that you're coming again. From this day forward, I choose to follow Jesus. I'm no longer who I used to be. I am a child of God and my faith is red hot. Thank you for loving me and saving me in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen, amen, amen. And here's what we're gonna do.